page_title: Walter A. Strong
section_title: Chicago Daily News
hierarchical_section_title: Walter A. Strong / Chicago Daily News
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Daily News Building, Chicago Subjects: Commercial facilities Places: Illinois &gt; Cook (county) &gt; Chicago Notes: Title from item. Extent: 1 print (postcard)&#160;: linen texture, color&#160;; 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. Accession #: 06_10_013431
context_page_description: Walter Ansel Strong was the publisher of the Chicago Daily News during Prohibition and the early days of the Great Depression. He was an innovator in business and a prominent civic leader.
context_section_description: Strong began his three-decade-long career at the Chicago Daily News as an audit clerk in August 1905. In 1908 he accompanied Victor Lawson to Europe as his secretary. Shortly thereafter, he became Lawson's office manager. In addition, Strong was given responsibility for overseeing the Chicago Daily News Fresh Air Fund Sanitarium, established by Jessie Lawson in 1887 for the benefit of poor urban children. Located on the lakefront at Fullerton Avenue, the sanitarium provided free transportation, health care, and meals daily except Sundays throughout the summer. Attendance averaged over 400 children daily, with “no one turned away for reason of class, color or condition.” Strong oversaw the construction of a new home for the sanitarium, a Prairie-style building designed by Dwight H. Perkins, which opened in 1920. When Strong became publisher in 1926, the building was winterized so it could operate year-round. The sanitarium was closed in 1937 and in 1952 it was converted into a theater now known as the Theater on the Lake.
  In October 1909, Strong began attending evening classes at John Marshall Law School. He graduated in 1912 and was admitted to the bar. One of his law professors was Frank J. Loesch, with whom he would later collaborate on law enforcement and anti-corruption campaigns in Chicago. With the outbreak of WWI, when competition for newspaper readers became fierce, Lawson put Strong in charge of the circulation department of the paper. In recognition of his ability and dedication to the paper, Lawson made Strong business manager in 1921.
  In the first several decades of Lawson's ownership, the Daily News had become one of the most widely read newspapers in the world, eclipsing its rival the Chicago Tribune. It had a reputation for fairness and honesty, and its international news coverage was second to none. However, after Lawson's wife died in 1913, his attention to the paper began to flag. The couple had no children and Lawson increasingly spent time away from Chicago at the estate and dairy farm his wife had developed and managed for them in Green Lake, Wisconsin. During the war years, Strong urged Lawson to invest in a modern plant so the Daily News could keep pace with its competitors. Initially, Lawson was interested enough to acquire an underused lot for that purpose, but he never followed through on the plan. The property, between Madison and Washington just east of the Chicago River, is where the Civic Opera House is today.
  In addition to overseeing the business side of operations, in 1922 Strong was instrumental in creating the radio station WMAQ (AM). WMAQ was one of the first stations in Chicago, and among the first owned by a newspaper. Strong decided that a young woman named Judith C. Waller was the right person to manage the station. He called her and said, “I’ve just bought a radio station; come down and run it.” Waller protested that she didn't know anything about running a station. Strong replied “neither do I, but come down and we’ll find out.” Waller was hired in February 1922. She went on to have a long and distinguished career in broadcasting. Strong was also an active participant in annual Radio Conferences organized by then US Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in 1924 and 1925. As chairman of the National Radio Coordinating Committee, then an influential broadcasting trade association, Strong assisted Hoover in gaining passage of the Radio Act of 1927 – the first law that regulated radio broadcasting as a mass medium. In 1927, WMAQ become a charter affiliate of the Columbia Broadcasting System. In 1930 the station was organized as a separate corporation, Strong becoming chairman of the board of directors.
  In the same year he launched the radio station, Strong established a corporation to build a paper mill in Chicago that used waste paper stock in the production of newsprint, under contract with the Daily News. This pioneering recycling initiative was in response to wartime shortages, which saw the price of paper (the single biggest expense for newspapers) more than double. Waterway Pape
caption: Daily News Building, Chicago
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